


even midwinter, they bloom

by Chromathesia



Series: tuc fics by chrom [1]
Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series), The Unsleeping City
Genre: Gen, and we follow her journey to adulthood, in which sofia's mother is korean, is this self-indulgent and semi-autobiographical? perhaps, sofie baek au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:34:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26298733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chromathesia/pseuds/Chromathesia
Summary: Before she was Sofia Lee, she was Sofia Bicicleta. Before she was Sofia Bicicleta, she was the daughter of her mother, whose roots reached deeper within her than she even knew, in echoes of languages and songs that she would never truly hear.
Series: tuc fics by chrom [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1910818
Comments: 22
Kudos: 55





	1. cotyledon

**Author's Note:**

> This went from a one-off what-if scenario to a fully developed universe and plot in what felt like days. It might take me a while to get around to updating it, but I will not stop writing it until it is finished.
> 
> Title is based on a lyric from Bonjo Arirang that I translated into English myself before modifying to fit the tone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **cotyledon:** the first leaf to sprout from a germinating seed

_ (this is not a story about Sofia Lee. This is not a story about Sofia Bicicleta.)  _

_ (this is a story about family and sacrifice and identity and love) _

_ (this is a story about a little girl and her mother) _

_ (this is a story about a woman and her estrangement) _

_ (if you must know that this story is about Sofia Bicicleta to enjoy it, then this isn’t the story for you.) _

* * *

One day, when Sofia is in kindergarten, she comes home with exciting news.

“Hailey told me today that I was her hundredth best friend,” she says. She isn’t bragging (she doesn’t know what that is yet) (she’s only five right now) (she’ll learn one day) but she is pushing around the polenta-and-sauce on her plate, drenching it happily in red before eating it.

“Good for you!” her father booms. “Hailey Kowalski, is that? Fine man, her father. See him at the church sometimes.” He returns to devouring the food on his plate (Sofia’s brothers don’t acknowledge what she said, they’re too distracted by their own rapidly-emptying plates).

Sofia glances sideways to see a look on her mother’s face, one that broke through her typical neutrality.

Perhaps strangers couldn’t read her mother’s face, but Sofia knew it intrinsically; she had been born to it, sewn to love it, taught to read it before she learned her first word. She knew what the slight furrow between her mother’s eyebrows meant, even if her father himself didn’t know the danger of that stilled countenance.

“Ma?” she asks quietly.

Her mother breaks back into the mask upon hearing her daughter’s voice. “Yes, Sofie?”

Sofia doesn’t know how to ask the proper amalgamation of  _ ‘is everything alright? are you alright?’  _ but she hopes her mother can see it in her eyes as clearly as she can see that the answer is  _ ‘no.’ _

“Finish your polenta,” she says curtly.

Hours later, when Sofia approaches her mother again, this time while her father and brothers have retired to the living room to watch football on the television, she gets her answer. “Why were you so happy to be her hundredth? Doesn’t that mean there are ninety-nine people in front of you?”

Sofia furrows her own brow (her mother recognizes the expression from making it in the mirror before--). “I guess?” she says. “But a hundred is a nice number. And she says she’s my friend now. I don’t care how many others there are.”

Sofia’s mother strokes her hair with a hand. “You’re a bright child, Sofia,” she says (she never calls her Sofia unless she’s saying something very serious and solemn). “Don’t let others tell you otherwise, and don’t lose that spark.”

(years later, she reminisces on that incident with her mother, and she finds out that Hailey Kowalski’s father had trained his children to glare at anyone who didn’t grow up with lily-white skin, fair hair, and wide blue eyes) (it is an insidious world that trains children to look upon others with hate from such a young age) (Sofia gazed at her orange-leaf eyes in the mirror that night, trying to find some hidden depth in their brown irises)

* * *

When Sofia thinks back on her childhood, she remembers her brothers being extremely protective of her. Her father had encouraged it, she recalls; when he sees them pushing other children aside for stepping too close to her, he claps them on the back and offers them a handful of candy from one of his pockets.

The one time Sofia tries it (the boy had leaned close enough to her face that she felt his warm breath against her cheek no matter how much she recoiled) (she had slapped his cheek hard enough to snap his face sideways and then shoved him onto the sidewalk) (she thinks he cried) her father had given her a gently stern look. “Sofia, my sweetheart, you can’t just push boys over.”

“Mario and Vincenzo and Lorenzo do it all the time,” she argues halfheartedly (she can’t really complain too much or else he’ll never take her seriously again).

“That’s different,” he says, and when Anthony Bicicleta says something it becomes law. “They’re boys. They should be protecting you. You shouldn’t have to worry about that.”

When she tells her mother, she stills for a second. “Stay out of trouble, Sofie,” she says softly. “It is good that your brothers defend you, that they love you. Treasure that, always.”

“They can be so dumb sometimes, though,” Sofia grumbles.

She glows under the light of her mother’s wry grin. “So it seems. But family is important, Sofie, perhaps one of the most important things in the world. Cherish them, at least for your poor mother?”

Sofia grumbles a bit but lets her mother hug her and kiss her cheek and brush her along.

She gets into a fight with a different boy the next week, all pulling hair and throwing wild punches until they smack and her would-be bully flees with a squawk. Rather than reporting to their father again, her brothers pick her up off of the Staten Island sidewalk, brush her off, and usher her into a quiet corner of the nearby park, where they teach her how to punch and tumble and defend herself as well as any of them can. They’re children playing at being heroes, but Sofia looks around at wide brown eyes and feels something click inside of her at their satisfied grins.

* * *

It’s not that it’s hard for Sofia to get along with other girls, it’s that the other girls don’t understand her.

Oh, they know who she is, usually. The girls she meets are well-acquainted with the idea of the Bicicleta family, and when they finally do meet her, their first question is almost always half-blurted out speculations about her mother.

“Is she really from China?” “I heard it was Japan.” “I heard Mr. Bicicleta paid a lot of money for her to come here.” “I heard his wife crashed a car and then he paid for her to come here.” “No, she got bitten by a poisonous snake and then he met her at the hospital.” And so on, and so on, and so on. 

Sofia knows twenty ways to kill a woman by the time she turns seven.

Perhaps if Sofia was a more relaxed child she would have made more friends. The girls never held anything against her mother; they were all parroting what their parents said over dinner. Even at her age, she knows that. They didn’t truly think her mother was purchased as a replacement for an older Italian wife. 

That doesn’t stop Sofia from going stone-faced when a new face turns to her with wide eyes, greedy to learn about that so infamous adult. At some point, she even begins turning away, refusing to answer the question with anything but a silent snub. Family-ordained playdates become sitting in silence (stubborn and glaring for hours, Sofia plays with her dolls by herself and snatches them away when the girl that has been shoved into her room attempts to reach out).

When her mother admonishes her for it after the girl goes home, Sofia sulks but is not repentant. “You shoulda heard what she was sayin’, Ma,” she grumbles. “Jumped-up li’l squirt didn’t know what garbage she was spittin’.”

Her mother raises an eyebrow. “Where did you learn to talk like that?”

Sofia shrugs. “Around,” she says vaguely. “We’re from Staten Island.”

Sofia’s mother sighs. “You have to treat others with respect, Sofie, even if they don’t treat you the same way.”

“Why?” Sofia insists. “She was  _ horrible _ . She said that Pa killed your whole family and kidnapped you from China. You’re not even  _ from  _ China.”

Her mother’s eyes widen in surprise before closing. She sighs. “Oh, my little daughter, already learning how sharp her claws are,” she says. “Sofie, your father would teach you that respect should always be earned. Sometimes, you must be softer than the other person to overwhelm them.”

Sofia’s nose wrinkles. “That sounds boring,” she grumbles.

Sofia’s mother laughs with a tired cadence and strokes her hair fondly. “You  _ would  _ think so, my little flower.”


	2. ortet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **ortet:** a parent plant from which daughter plants are created
> 
> Special thanks to everyone who helped me smooth this chapter out :)

Sofia makes friends eventually. Most of her friendships in those earlier years were ephemeral, melting away each year as the children learned who they were, but Angelica is a constant ever since Sofia saw her standing alone at the nearby playground, pointed at her, and demanded that the two of them play together in the sandbox.

When she looks back on those days, Sofia remembers that Angelica generally wore her hair with braids that led to beaded twists that she had admired as a little girl. There was something magical about how Angelica’s mother could paint hearts and waves and stars into her daughter’s hair, how there was love apparent in the very way that the bright pony beads were woven through her hair. 

Sofia’s father wouldn’t have liked Angelica, though, so whenever they grew tired of slides and running and the sandbox, Sofia would follow Angelica to her apartment where her mother gave Angelica a loud kiss on the cheek and Sofia a plate of Ritz crackers with peanut butter sandwiched between them. The two girls would whisk their treat away to a corner of the living room where they would silently watch from afar as Angelica’s grandmother squinted at the small television and mutter over what the white ladies on the cooking shows were doing.

Sometimes, Angelica would pipe up, “Mimi, why d’you still watch them shows if they get it all wrong?”

She would be gestured over, leaving Sofia to munch quietly on whatever snack had been pushed into her hands upon walking in, and her grandmother would fuss over one of her twists as she said reluctantly, “Sometimes, they got a decent enough thought.”

Sofia and Angelica didn’t talk about these exchanges. It didn’t seem important when the two of them chased each other around wood chips and tiny, smooth pebbles, yet it was almost stifling when Sofia looked up to see Angelica beaming at her grandmother. Sofia couldn’t help but stare at the two of them; something about seeing them together poked at an emptiness that she didn’t know was there.

One day, Sofia returns from one of these outings to her home to Nonna Sophia cooing over her brothers and that emptiness doesn’t go away while she drowns in the thick perfume that her father’s mother wears as she sweeps Sofia up in her arms and loudly kisses her cheek repeatedly.

“Oh, my dear li’l darling, my beautiful li’l dear!” she squawks in the learned accent of the city and Sofia giggles at the flattery but when Nonna Sophia puts her down and pats her on the head she feels the smile fall away.

That night, when her mother comes to tuck her into bed, Sofia looks up at her and asks, “Ma, where’s your mama?”

Sofia’s mother gives her a confused look.

“Y’know, like how Pa has Nonna Sophia,” Sofia says quietly. “Is there a Nonna on your side?”

Sofia doesn’t expect to see her mother blink something away quickly.

“Yes, you have a grandmother on my side too, Sofie,” she says quietly.

“Why doesn’t she visit us? Is she as loud as Nonna Sophia? When can I meet her?” The questions pour out of Sofia quickly as her heart races. She thinks of gentle hands tugging lovingly at braids and soft forehead kisses.

Her mother smiles at her wanly. “I don’t know, Sofie,” she says quietly, before tucking her in more gently than usual and floating out of the room.

* * *

Sofia may have been younger than her brothers by five and seven and eight years and they may have idolized their father, but Mario and Vincenzo and Lorenzo love her in their own pushing-other-kids-who-teased-her and not-telling-their-father-about-Angelica way. It’s for the second reason that she approaches them, asking them for advice.

Her brothers blink at her, and it occurs to her belatedly that perhaps boys don’t give their friends thank-you gifts.

“Why?” is the first thing Vincenzo says before Lorenzo slugs him in the shoulder with a glare, glancing to Sofia to make sure that their brother’s question didn’t make her cry (why would it? that’s just how Vincenzo is).

“Uh, well, Evan says that if you wanna make a girl happy, you should give them something she’d like,” Mario says, ignoring his older brothers. 

“You should get her food,” Lorenzo says with his fifteen-year-old wisdom. “Everyone loves food, especially li’l brats like you.” Vincenzo elbows him this time.

Sofia blinks. “Food? Like a sandwich or somethin’?”

“Nah, like-- like those things that Ma Maria gets sometimes,” Lorenzo clarifies. “The onion rings and the chocolate pretzel sticks and the crab crackers. Y’know, what she makes you all bring to your little kids’ schools for Children’s Day.”

Sofia thinks on this. 

* * *

The next time Sofia meets up with Angelica at the playground, she has a paper bag with her.

“What’s in there, Sofie?” her friend asks. There are no beads in her hair today, but the ends of each braid have been lovingly clipped with bright pastel blue plastic bows.

“Ma didn’t want to put your mama out of any more trouble, so she gave us some snacks to share,” Sofia says, opening the bag to show her friend. They tear into the paper with children’s greed, squealing happily when they dig up bright purple and red packaging. Angelica’s eyes go wide as she snatches a choco-pie up, ripping the plastic off to enthusiastically munch at the cake-like snack. Sofia smiles at her with excitement as she opens the other bag, crunching at the honey-coated snack inside.

It hadn’t taken too much effort to convince her mother to buy these treats for her and Angelica to share. No matter how New Yorker Sofia’s father wanted his family to be, he could not fight against the force that was four children who wanted snacks, and all of the Bicicleta siblings had long since developed a taste for the crackers and sweets that her mother would buy from a small grocery store owned by a couple whose hair looked like it was spun from thunderclouds. Truly, the household’s saving grace was that each Bicicleta child had a snack that was their favorite and they had learned early on not to steal their siblings’ preferred treat (Sofia was known to bite in her youth).

The two girls sit in the park and share their treats until every last crumb has been eaten up, and when they inevitably go to Angelica’s apartment, her grandmother smiles to Sofia as Angelica describes the choco-pie in great detail and something in her heart sings at that wayward connection.

* * *

One night, instead of tucking her in, Sofia’s mother sits on her bed, holding the family’s phone. She starts typing numbers, each press eliciting a musical beep from the device.

“Good night, Ma,” Sofia says, trying to coax her mother out of breaking her typical pattern.

“Shh, one second, Sofia,” her mother says softly, pressing one final button and holding the phone to her ear.

After a little bit, Sofia’s mother starts to sing words that Sofia is immediately enchanted by. There is a roundness to the language that she speaks that wraps around her ears and settles in her heart, a familiarity to the words that Sofia has never heard before. It is strange and comforting all at once and she sits up in bed, eyes widened in awe.

Her mother exchanges a few more words before holding the phone to Sofia. “Say ‘hello _halmoni_ ’ _,_ ” she encourages.

“ _Harl-moh-nee?_ ” The words don’t sound as melodic coming from her. She looks to her mother for guidance, but she just smiles encouragingly and presses the phone into her hand.

When Sofia holds the phone to her ear, she hears a warbling voice at the other side. _“Soapy-ah?”_ the woman says, and somehow this woman who she’s never met knows her and is talking to her and Sofia doesn’t quite know what to do.

“H-hello, _halmoni_ ,” she says, carefully sounding those words out.

The words that follow are in the same musical language that Sofia heard her mother just speak, and even though she doesn’t know what is being said to her, she hears how the voice on the other end of the phone blossoms with warmth and patience for her stuttering hums. Sofia doesn’t have the words to tell this voice how happy it makes her feel, about how she can feel her heart flutter with each tone. Finally, Sofia hears what she equates to “Ma”, gives a final affirming hum, and passes the phone back to her mother, who picks up on the conversation with an ease that Sofia has never seen her wear. At some point, the conversation ends with an extended word, a hum, and a quiet click to turn the phone off.

Sofia can see tears in her mother’s eyes that never fall.

“Who was that, Ma?” she asks.

“That was your grandmother,” her mother replies quietly. 

They sit in silence for a little while longer, letting the final remnants of that just-discovered melody settle into the night. Sofia’s mother says nothing else to her, simply tucking her in, kissing her softly on the forehead, and quietly leaving her room.


	3. a rose is a rose is a rose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **a rose is a rose is a rose:** quoted from Gertrude Stein's "Sacred Emily", purporting that things are as they are and that using the name of something invokes all other meanings and emotional symbolism derived from it.
> 
> While I have drawn a lot from my childhood in this story, I have never lived in New York City, let alone Staten Island. This is the part of the story in which I start mentioning public transport and describing a path to get from place to place in the city. I’ve done as much research as I can to find realistic travel times and station names, but if I’m a bit inaccurate, please pardon my ignorance.

When she was younger, Sofia didn’t have much occasion to go to New York City proper, between her mother’s inability to drive and her father’s inherited disdain of going anywhere that required a ferry. She had herself inherited a modicum of that disdain; the other four boroughs were filled with tourists, people who didn’t viscerally understand what it meant to love the city, people who came to be dazzled and not embraced in return. 

Her mother wasn’t from the city either, as entrenched in it as she seemed to Sofia, and she was drawn to the loud colors of its song and heart. She seemed intent on impressing her wonder of it into Sofia, and whenever her mother decided to head to the city, Sofia was inevitably dragged along with her.

Sofia’s brothers' grandmother (not the one they shared) demands to see her  _ tesoros _ one day in early December, and while her father took his sons to visit her, Sofia’s mother decides she wants to go to Flushing. Sofia, in her almost-in-middle-school wisdom, doesn’t see why a place called Flushing could be so enthralling to her mother. The concept of visiting a place named after the sounds of a toilet was unappealing at best, disgusting at worst, and she loudly makes this point known, even after they’ve gotten off of the bus and are walking to Penn Station. Her mother simply shushes her, asking for her patience, and soon they’re taking a train that deposits them on unfamiliar streets. Sofia thought she’d outgrown holding her mother’s hand but she feels herself clinging while looking around at awnings covered in round symbols that mildly resemble geometric faces. 

She’s ushered into a building filled with waiters briskly walking through aisles with tongs, flipping sizzling meat on grates in front of patrons who sit with green bottles and shot glasses and clouded brown plastic water glasses. Her mother says something to the hostess, holding up two fingers, and the younger woman smiles at Sofia before leading them to a table with its own grate and air vent. She’s handed a cup of something that is filled with ice cubes and tastes like being-five-years-old-and-taught-to-punch-a-boy-in-the-park and there are small plates of red foods that don’t taste like tomatoes and when a waitress comes over and begins placing thin strips of beef and pork on the grill, Sofia stares wide-eyed as they hiss merrily in front of her. The rice in the metal bowl in front of her doesn’t dissolve the way her mother’s risotto does and everything is salty and garlicky and sweet all at once and Sofia has never quite had anything so delicate and succulent before. The beef doesn’t almost-bleed the way her father demands his steaks made, the pork is rich in a way her mother’s bacon isn’t, and she’s almost sent into sensory overdrive at the sight and sound and smell and taste of it all.

(when she asks her mother when they will come back, when she will taste such things again, she smiles warmly and almost a little smugly. “I thought you didn’t like Flushing?”) (when she asks her mother why she doesn’t cook like that at home, she loses the smile. “your father wouldn’t like that.”)

* * *

Christmas in the Bicicleta family has always been a huge event. Sofia and her brothers are bundled up in fleece jackets and gloves and hats and scarves and bustled into one of her father’s cars and they drive to Nonna Sophia’s house for dinner and presents. They had gotten their presents from Santa Claus, sure, but the children weren’t the type to give up being spoiled by their familial matriarch.

It’s loud and boisterous when they walk in. Anthony wasn’t an only child and his siblings’ children weren’t either; on top of that, Nonna Sophia derived great pleasure from doting on her grandchildren, filling them with a quantity of sweets that they wouldn’t be given at any other point in the year. Some of Sofia’s cousins sweep her brothers up, already drawing them into pulling matches over stuffed animals and bashing newly gifted action figures together, while she is ushered into the kitchen and dumped next to Nonna Sophia herself.

Her grandmother has always seemed larger-than-life to Sofia, all enveloping hugs and lingering perfume and pinched cheeks. Nonna Sophia has an apron around Sofia’s neck within seconds, gives her a kiss on the cheek, and shoos her over to a counter where some of her other cousins are enthusiastically grating and mixing cheeses in a bowl.

“How are you, Maria?” Nonna Sophia asks loudly, kindly, her words punctuated by the sounds of her cleaver chopping into whatever she was breaking down for her stew.

Even without looking, Sofia could hear the difference between Nonna Sophia’s cooking and her mother’s. Nonna Sophia announced that she was cooking with her actions: the cleaver she preferred hits against the cutting board with loud, precise clicks that drowns out the sounds of her ingredients slumping against its blade. Sofia’s mother is quieter, sliding her blade rather than slamming it down, and it seems to shush whatever she is chopping. It always takes Sofia a couple of seconds to realize that her mother had finished dicing something.

“We’re doing well,” her mother says mildly. “Anthony thinks Lorenzo might have a girl tucked away somewhere; I think we should wait for him to bring it up himself rather than demanding it from him.

“Oh, don’t worry too much,” Nonna Sophia says. “Why, Anthony himself couldn’t ever keep it secret when he was stepping out with someone. He thought he was the smoothest little guy but it wasn’t a surprise to anyone when he brought his girl home, and the wedding--” 

There’s a telling silence. Nonna Sophia’s cleaver has stopped slamming down, but Sofia could still hear her mother slicing something. Carrots, maybe, or the green onions that she seemed to love.

“I’m sure it was beautiful, if the photos show even half of what was there,” she says.

The silence lasts a couple of seconds longer. Even Sofia’s cousins have paused, wedges of cheese held aloft.

* * *

It’s almost New Year’s and Sofia’s mother is searching for something in particular and decided that Flushing was slightly too far to go so Sofia finds herself trailing after her mother in the city proper. Manhattan is loud, snow turning to grey slush under sluggish traffic’s tires, and Sofia’s tired of walking around the city bundled up in a puffy jacket and scarf, but her mother hands her a box of circular chocolate-filled cookies to nibble on and asks her to hold on for just a little longer.

On their way to “one last market, Sofie,” Sofia’s mother suddenly stops walking, standing stock still. Sofia is staring at the ground when this happens and jumps slightly, looking up at her mother in confusion.

“Ma?” she asks before following her mother’s gaze.

There’s a man standing in front of them who stands with a pride that straightens his shoulders, a calmness to his features, a set to his jaw. He looks like the kind of man who Sofia would expect to shop at the market her mother wants to get to but something about him is intrinsically different. No matter what her father thinks, this man would not slot in with those who spoke roundly.

“Rose?” And Sofia feels her mother relax beside her, an uncertain tension that Sofia had not recognized slipping from her posture.

“It’s Maria now, and you know that,” she says with a warmth that belies familiarity. 

Maybe Sofia gripped a little harder at her mother’s hand, maybe she shuffled slightly, but her mother turns to her and says, “Sofie, this is Mr. Jackson. Can you say hello for me?”

“Hello, Mr. Jackson,” Sofia says dutifully, unable to make eye contact with the man in front of her.

She hears his slight chuckle. “Never thought a daughter of yours would be shy. She’s your spitting image,” Jackson says.

“I’d love to chat, but it’s pretty cold and I need to get to H-Mart before it closes,” Sofia’s mother says. “What are you doing here? Aren’t you usually closer to Staten Island?”

Jackson nods. “Something came up. Jenny was going to come over with me but her oldest kid got stuck at home with the flu. Shame it had to happen over the holidays, but so it goes.”

Sofia feels lost in the torrent of names she’s been bombarded with.

Sofia’s mother nods. “I haven’t talked to Jenny in quite a few years,” she muses quietly.

“I’m sure she misses you, Rose,” Jackson says. “You should reach out— do you want an updated phone number?”

She takes down the number in a small notebook she keeps in her purse.

“We should get going, Jackson,” she says. “Sofie, say good-bye to Mr. Jackson, now.”

“Good-bye, Mr. Jackson,” Sofia repeats.

“Bye-bye, Sofie,” he says, giving her a little wave. The absurdity of the gesture startles a giggle out of her, and his smiling face settles into something more genuine. “You should bring her over, Rose. If she’s anything like you, she must be a little firecracker.”

Sofia’s mother gives him a slight smile of her own. “Perhaps I will soon,” she allows. They exchange one last set of farewells before Sofia’s mother navigates to the market she had sought out and Jackson disappears into the crowd of people.

* * *

The following January marks the start of piano lessons for Sofia. It’s one of the few things that her mother and father both encourage her to do with the same ferocity, her father because many of his friends’ daughters are learning how to play and her mother because she thinks it’s something Sofia will enjoy. Sofia is doubtful of both but she attends the weekly lessons that her mother arranges and learns how to read five-lines-four-spaces and every-good-boy-deserves-fun. 

Her father invests in a massive baby grand piano in their living room, rearranging all of the furniture in the room to make it fit. It’s impressive, even to Sofia’s disinterested eyes, and she does enjoy sitting at it and stroking the ivory that she’s expected to master.

After-church gatherings at their house turn into impromptu recitals where relatives demand Sofia play for them whatever she is learning. It takes a few months, but when she finally is able to poke out the simple arrangement of Vivaldi’s Spring (she stutters out the melody with her right hand as her left hand lets its chords reverberate) she is met with wild applause from her entire extended family. 

“Brava, Sofia!” her Nonno Piero calls out to her after she stands to bow, still wearing the frilly pastel pink dress her mother had wrestled her into that morning. “Excellent. One day, you will be playing the masterpieces!”

She grins at this, her face lighting up as she sees how excited he is at this concept, pushing away the general disgruntlement she feels at being made to sit at the piano at all.

Her aunts and uncles gush over her, nudging her cousins to say something kind, and it’s all hustle and bustle until that night, once they’ve all left, and Sofia’s mother walks into the room for their biweekly phone call to her grandparents.

Sofia has begun to recognize things that they say:  _ Song-ee-ah _ , they call her, or  _ Soapy-ah _ when she corrects them, or  _ Pi-ah  _ sometimes, and they always start off their conversations with her with  _ jal-ji-nae  _ and follow up with  _ geu-reh  _ before the words devolve into melodies that Sofia cannot read as easily as good-boys-do-fine-always and BEAD-gum-candy-fruit. 

That doesn’t stop Sofia from telling her grandparents about her music. She learned at some point that they could roughly understand her despite not being able to respond in English, and she speaks slowly yet at length about the piano concert that day.

“I played something by Vivaldi,” she says. “Do you know it,  _ halmoni _ ?” (she’s gotten better at saying it) “It goes like this--” and she starts to hum the basic melody for her grandmother.

“ _ Ah, geu-reh, geu-reh. Cham jal-han-dah, _ ” she hears on the other end, and Sofia hears the pride oozing from her grandmother’s voice.

“I don’t think I like piano very much,” Sofia confides, glancing up at her mother, who gives her a resigned smile. “But Ma and Pa say I need to play it for longer before deciding to quit.”

Her grandmother hums, perhaps in sympathy, perhaps in understanding.

The conversation ekes out a few more minutes before Sofia is sitting quietly, gazing out, and her grandmother says something that sounds like a question and ends with  _ umma _ and Sofia hands the phone over to her mother. She lies in her bed, enthralled as always with the effortless way that her mother weaves the language, as the conversation ends and the phone clicks off. They sit quietly.

“Did you call Jenny?” Sofia asks, the question bursting from her.

Her mother looks over to her, startled. “Miss Jenny,” she corrects quietly. “I was going to earlier, but the house got too busy.”

“You should call her,” Sofia says plainly. “Pa has so many friends and you don’t. It’s not fair.”

“Not fair?” She hears the smile in her mother’s voice, but sleep is descending on her.

“To you,” Sofia says. “You should have friends besides just Pa’s friends.”

“You may be right, Sofie,” she hears her mother say as her eyes close.


	4. inosculation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **inosculation:** the process of two trees' roots, branches, or trunks growing together
> 
> Gonna be real with all of you, I haven’t really watched TUC 2 quite yet, so hopefully there isn’t anything that clashes too much. That being said, this is already an AU. Also, the Order of the Concrete Fist have a non-magical headquarters too, now. It's basically just a warehouse they conduct some business out of.

Spring heralds its approach with a wet thaw that soaks the bench that Sofia and Angelica are perched on. Angelica’s grown a little more into herself, Mary Janes traded for knock-off converse that shimmer silver in the sunlight filtering through New York’s cloud cover, plastic barrettes buried in the past along with some of their naivete.

“Didja do anything fun this weekend?” Angelica asks, kicking the muddy slush glumly (she had summoned Sofia to see if they could scrounge up the snow for a snowman and been very disappointed). “See a movie? Play a concert?”

“Met my ma’s friend’s kids,” Sofia says, holding out the bag of chips that they’d bought together at a nearby bodega after taking a handful.

“Ooh, was it the blonde one who drew on your dolls when you were six?” A satisfied  _ crunch _ punctuates her question.

Sofia wrinkles her nose. “Oh, Lizzie Sharpe? Nah. It was one of her friends from before she met Pa, I think.”

There’s a pause, thick with implications that Sofia knows Angelica will not voice. “Oh. Were they nice?”

“They were boys,” Sofia says with the haughty disgust of an almost-preteen girl. “Annoying. Wouldn’t stop talking about trading cards and making gross jokes.”

Angelica hums. “Was your mama’s friend nice, at least?”

Sofia shrugs around the chip she had just shoved into her mouth. “I guess. She told me to call her Miss Jenny and she made Ma smile. We’re visiting again next week.”

Angelica hands the rest of the chips back to Sofia. “Cool.”

Sofia does not tell Angelica about how she sat on a rope swing, watching wide-eyed as the two boys spent the evening throwing grapes and yelling at each other in a flurry of words that she only half-understood. She does not tell Angelica about how, at some point, Benny had turned to her and called her “ _noona_ ” and all she could do was stare at him, bewildered. She does not tell Angelica about how Dale had reached over and tugged on his hair hard enough to make Benny yelp and shout for their mother, who had yelled, “Daehyun! Leave your  _ dong-saeng  _ alone!” She does not tell Angelica about how she felt both out-of-place and perfectly slotted in from the expectancy of Benny’s gaze at the not-her-name and the thought that maybe she should have called him something that wasn’t Benny or Daewon.

Sofia does, however, ball up the chip bag, toss it into the nearby trash can, and ask Angelica, “So how’s Lucy doing? You still walking home with her even though she lives ten blocks away?”

* * *

That Sunday, as the family bustles through the house to prepare for church, Sofia’s father approaches her as she fixes her cardigan in the mirror.

“Hey there, Sofie,” he says in a voice softer than she expects, placing his hands on her shoulders. She’s growing: his chin has disappeared behind her head.

“Yeah, Pa?” she asks.

He doesn’t say anything for a little bit. He stands, he looks at her in the mirror. Sofia remembers how Nonna Sophia used to spend an hour brushing her hair, cooing over how it so perfectly matched her father’s. 

“You’re really growin’ up, huh, kid?” he says more gruffly than usual.

“Mhmm,” she says. “Can you help me put this on?” The necklace is a Christmas gift from one of her aunts, who now hums disappointedly every Sunday that Sofia hasn’t worn it.

“Of course, princess.” Sofia holds her hair back and patiently waits as her father fumbles with the clasp for a few seconds. 

He examines her in the mirror. “I’m gonna have to start beating back every boy that walks up to you,” he grumbles amidst her loud, exasperated sighs. “You’re just growing up so pretty. You look just like your ma.”

That gives Sofia pause. “Is that a good thing?” she asks quietly.

She sees her father visibly start. “Have you seen your mother?” he asks with a bark of a laugh. “Of course it is. Maria’s one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen and she’s got one of the sharpest minds I’ve ever met. Anyone’d be lucky to be just like her.”

Something wells up in Sofia’s throat. “Why d’you argue with her so much, then?”

Her father pauses and gives her reflection a look filled with some emotion that she is too young to have experienced. “Sofia, just because your ma and I don’t always see eye-to-eye about everything doesn’t mean we love each other **–** or you **–** any less for it. Adults are just like that sometimes. We all think we’re right all of the time and we don’t like it when other people think we’re wrong. You’ll understand.”

Sofia bites her lip at that.

“What’s bothering you, sweetheart?”

“Can I take martial arts, then?”

Her father blinks at the question before chuckling. She smells the faint cigarette smoke that clings to his form and feels the reverberation of his laughter as he leans forward to kiss the back of her head. “Of course. Anything for my darling girl.” He catches her eye in the mirror. “Maybe you can be the one beating the boys back. Give my old bones some rest.”

“You’re not old,” Sofia says automatically.

“Kind of you to say, Sofie. Now, c’mon, we’re gonna be late if we dally any longer.”

* * *

Angelica gives her a blank look when they meet up in front of the bodega after school the next day. “Damn. Your daddy’s gonna let you learn martial arts now? Wasn’t he all against that like last week?”

Sofia shrugs, leaning down to give the resident cat a scratch behind the ears. “I guess. But he said yes now, so who cares?”

“That’s true.” They pay for their bottles of soda and the chips they will share that day and navigate to their corner of the park (the slush is still there, though rapidly dissipating as the days warm). “When d’you start?”

Sofia pops the chip bag open and reaches in. “I think Ma said Mr. Jackson wanted me to come in tomorrow to see what kinda technique I could learn, and then they’d go from there.”

Angelica takes the bag when Sofia offers it to her. “Sounds like fun. You know what kinda things they teach there?”

Sofia shrugs around a mouthful of fake cheese and puffed corn, scraping residue off of her fingers with her teeth. “No clue,” she says, dusting her hand off. “I think it’ll be fun, though.”

“Duh.” Angelica crunches consideringly for a couple of seconds. “Tell me how it goes?”

“Totally.” Their conversation devolves to teasing and gossiping soon after.

* * *

Jackson is much less stoic in the grey walls of the building that Sofia’s mother brings her to. There’s a fire in his eyes that Sofia doesn’t remember when she first met him, a fire that threatens to find whatever kindling that lies inside her and set her ablaze. It frightens her, that this man who would be a stranger if she wasn’t her mother’s daughter can see so clearly into her and find whatever fragment he wants to see.

“What do you know about this monastery, Sofie?” Jackson asks (he had tried to call her Sofia but one involuntary grimace had been enough to convince him to switch to her nickname).

“Well, you and Miss Jenny work here,” she says. “My ma used to work here, I guess?” At Jackson’s nod, she continues emboldened. “And you teach people how to fight here.”

Jackson tilts his head at her last sentence. “Not quite right, there.”

Sofia doesn’t say anything, opting instead to give him a confused look.

“Martial arts isn’t necessarily fighting,” Jackson says. “It’s knowing your body. It’s knowing your place in the world. It’s affecting the world with yourself. It’s connecting with others through all of those former points. Fighting can be selfish: you fight to defend yourself, you fight to win. Martial arts may seem like fighting, but it is further than that. It is the world cradling you in its hands and allowing your will to prevail.”

Sofia’s confusion did not clear at his words.

Jackson chuckles. “Observe.” He stands from where they have been sitting on the ground and turns to the right, closing his eyes. The amused grin slips from his face and he stands, perfectly still, for a minute. Something in his expression changes as well, going from a calm look to one that resonates somewhere in the back of Sofia’s stomach. When he opens his eyes, the fire that Sofia had seen earlier is gone, replaced with some emotion that reflects cooler, icier. Jackson slips into something that wavers between a dance, a well-practiced routine, and something more deadly that evokes the image of a snake slipping between bushes to strike unseen. It is awe-inspiring and captivating and Sofia can feel her eyes growing rounder and rounder as Jackson transcends from being just the older Chinese man who offered her a hearty handshake when she and her mother walked into the monastery. His form shimmers, darting into and out of the shadows that Sofia hadn’t even noticed in the room, and she can barely keep her eyes on him as he finishes the routine and stands, feet planted firmly on the ground, eyes closed. His posture shifts slowly, relaxing from something akin to otherworldly back into the mortal flesh that Jackson had always been. He takes a couple of deep breaths to re-center himself, rolls his neck, and turns to face Sofia again, the warmth back in his expression.

“Did that seem just like fighting to you?” he asks.

Sofia’s eyes are still widened. “When can I learn how to do that?” she asks eagerly.

He laughs loudly, as though he can feel her enthusiasm welling inside of him and can’t help but join in. “Not for a few years, I’m afraid. There’s groundwork that needs to be done before you can learn anything too advanced, and it would hurt you if you started too early.”

“Like learning scales when playing the piano?” Sofia asks, trying not to feel too put-out.

“Exactly like that.” Jackson gestures her to stand up. “Now, you said something about fighting. Have you fought before?”

Sofia hesitates, and that is enough to make Jackson give her a smile that conveys that he can keep her secrets. She nods, afraid to voice her sins out loud.

“Alright. Show me.”

“Huh?” Sofia can’t help it when the shocked sound slips out of her.

“Show me. I need to see if there’s anything you could incorporate into your own martial arts style.”

“Can’t I just learn what you did?”

“You could,” Jackson allows, “but it will never fit you perfectly. There are basics you will be taught, but the specific way you will perform some of the more advanced techniques personalize your style.”

It takes more cajoling from Jackson, but Sofia finally brings her fists to her face and ducks down the way her brothers taught her on the streets of Staten Island and in the corners of parks. Her fighting is all flailing limbs and darting away from others’ punches and kicks and flying everywhere (it feels eons messier and clumsier than whatever it is that Jackson is capable of) and after a few minutes she stands doubled over in front of him, trying to control her breathing.

“Alright, that should be enough,” he says, not even winded. “Tell your mother that I’d like to see you at this time every week for now.”

When Sofia has caught her breath, she nods to him. He smiles at her and begins to lead her to where her mother has been quietly reading a book she brought with her. Before they can get there, Jackson pauses.

“Hello, Dale,” he says, and Sofia peeks out from behind him to see Jenny’s oldest son standing in the hallway in front of her. “Did you need something?”

Dale is staring at Sofia as if surprised to see her but rips his gaze away to look at Jackson. “Uh, yeah. My mom wanted me to come a little earlier to get something from the monastery library for her, but I can’t get in there so I was looking for someone who could get it for me?”

Jackson blinks at that. “Now that’s a bit of a pickle,” he muses. “If you can bring Sofie here back to where her mom’s waiting for her, I can run off and grab that for you.”

Dale shrugs. “I don’t mind.” He looks to her before gesturing behind him with his head. “This way.”

It’s not awkward per se to follow behind Dale after bidding farewell to Jackson for the day, but Sofia can tell that both she and Dale were far too aware that they weren’t friends as they walked down concrete floors.

“You’d think this place has more money to make this look better,” she says, both as an aside and as a possible point of conversation.

Dale, who seems more than happy to walk in silence, just turns to her with the bewildered look of a teenager having a child forced onto him. “What are you talking about?”

“Y’know, this place,” Sofia says, gesturing around her with a shrug. “Seems like a super fancy place that can offer private lessons, but it’s still all just kinda gross concrete. Y’know?”

Dale grunts at that. “I guess,” he allows. “Not like you have a say what they do with their money, though.”

“I never said I did!” 

Dale ignores the indignity in her voice. “Through that doorway,” he directs, pointing. “Did you figure out how to get back to the training room by yourself, or were you just thinking about complaining the whole time?”

Sofia glances at him. “How did you know we were training?”

Dale shrugs. “I’m just a genius.”

Sofia snorts at that. “Sure, brainiac.”

“See? Even you know.”

“It’s called sarcasm. You should know about that if you’re so smart.” 

"Could be that you're just a little brat."

Sofia sticks her tongue out at him before stomping over to the doorway.

Her mother is waiting for her by the door. “Did you have fun, Sofie?” she says.

“Can you tell Miss Jenny that Dale is a jerk?” Sofia asks.

Her mother laughs, startled. “I didn’t realize you had already formed an opinion on him.”

“I didn’t until today. Now I know he’s a jerk.” She scowls darkly at the pavement. “He’s so annoying. Thinks he knows everything.”

“Be nice, Sofie.”

“Don’t wanna.”


End file.
